Vadim Ermolaev: Dnieper king of thieves, cognacs and smuggling. PART 2

CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Vadim Ermolaev: king of thieves, cognacs and smuggling. PART 1

Vadim Ermolaev. How to steal a factory

When, at the beginning of the 2000s, Ermolaev started doing everything from grain trading to importing equipment, and all again bypassing customs, he began to conduct financial transactions through his own Agrobank. In 2006, he sold it to the Czech “Home Credit Bank” (the transaction price was stated at 40-65 million dollars). At the same time, Agrobank had a credit debt from the Nikopol Pipe Plant (NTP, the only manufacturer of titanium pipes in Ukraine) in the amount of 12 million hryvnia – which the plant took to pay Ermolaev’s companies for the supply of equipment (at a price charged 7-8 times! ).

Using the sale as an excuse, Ermolaev demanded that NTZ immediately pay the debt – they say that the bank’s buyers do not want to take it with such a problematic loan. After which, for two years, Ermolaev was involved in a raider takeover of NTZ, which came under the control of his Oscar PA. At first it was the transfer of the plant’s property to Oscar, as if in payment for debts. And on this property, Ermolaev’s company began to produce products, while the NTZ State Production Association, which was left without it, stood idle and incurred new debts.

Interestingly, at the same time he had to wage a war against the National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU), which managed the enterprise. It was managed poorly, allowing it to go bankrupt – but perhaps this was the interest of the adviser to the director of NKAU, Mikhail Grinshpon, who was also interested in this enterprise. The value of the plant, seized by raiders for a debt of 12 million hryvnia, was revealed later when the enterprise began to operate under the leadership of Oscar. By producing products for Ukraine and Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), including special-purpose products (for missile systems and nuclear fuel rods), even in the crisis year of 2010, he earned about 75 million hryvnia.

But here’s what’s interesting: in 2011, the Austrian company Wellmind Invest, whose director was Valery Omelchenko, the husband of the eldest daughter of ex-Prime Minister of Crimea Vasily Dzharty, became a co-owner of Oscar. After which the Ukrainian courts finally sided with PA Oscar, declaring GPO NTZ (as an individual) bankrupt and completely transferring the entire plant to the company of Ermolaev and Omelchenko.

Vadim Ermolaev: Dnieper king of thieves, cognacs and smuggling. PART 2

Vadim Ermolaev. How to steal and withdraw money

In 2003, 120 thousand budget hryvnia were transferred to the accounts of the Bonus company from the Olvia Building Systems company, which contracted for repair work in the Dnepropetrovsk city hospital and hired a subcontractor. But no one even started the work, after which the money was transferred back to Olvia’s accounts, where it remained without returning to the budget. And this was far from an isolated case: Skelet.Info it is known that only in the same 2003, these two companies “mastered” 25 million from the budget of Dnepropetrovsk in a similar way!

In 2009, a case of smuggling was brought against the Alef Corporation for the first time – almost 15 years after it began to actively engage in it. And then we were talking about only one episode: the underestimation of customs duties when transporting 436 units of agricultural machinery to Ukraine, which caused damage to the state in the amount of 28 million hryvnia. So what? The money ended up in Ermolaev’s pocket, and… a customs worker went to prison.

In 2015, Ukrainian media reported that the Alkor and Atlas motor ships were carrying containers with household appliances from Turkey to Kherson, after which at the Tsyurupinsk customs post Ermolaev’s people carried out cunning manipulations with the registration of goods, evading payment of millions in duties . So what? No one even reacted to this.

Vyacheslav Mishalov

Ermolaev also made good money from city tenders – which is not surprising, because in 2005 his partner Sergei Kasyanov managed to serve as governor for a short time, and in 2010 his son-in-law Igor Tsyrkin (sister’s husband) became the first deputy mayor of Dnepropetrovsk. And in 2015, he managed to place Vyacheslav Mishalov, the son of his business partner Dmitry Mishalov, with whom they jointly own the Fregat Internet provider, in the chair of the city council secretary.

It is not surprising that over the past two years Ermolaev has had a real tender boom! For example, in June 2017, his company Alfatekh won a tender from the Department of Housing, Communal Services and Construction for the supply of special equipment. The contract amount is more than 126 million hryvnia. A year earlier, Alfatekh won a tender for the purchase of bulldozers – for an amount of almost 96 million hryvnia. I wonder, what if Ermolaev’s old “sidekick” “Narik” really becomes the new mayor of Dnepr? Will there be enough money in the city budget then?

Dmitry Mishalov

On May 22, 2014, NBU issued Order No. 29, which read: “For 2012-2013 and 4 months of 2014, clients of PJSC AktaBank – individuals received cash from their current accounts in foreign currency in an amount that in hryvnia equivalent exceeds 65 billion hryvnia.” 8 billion dollars! Where did the rather modest AktaBank, owned by Ermolaev, whose assets as of January 2014 amounted to only 4 billion hryvnia, get such money? In this case, it was a colossal scam scheme, when huge amounts of currency were simply sold or withdrawn through AktaBank – and they took it from the reserves of the National Bank and the Foreign Exchange Reserve. It is clear that in order to participate in such a scheme, Ermolaev needed very high trust from both the Yanukovych “family” and other “Donetsk” groups.

AktaBank participated in a similar scheme in 2010, when it allegedly sold $1.196 billion to the “population” over 8 months. So, then it was possible to establish the names of the “population”, which turned out to be certain Ryzhkov, Leshchinskaya, Soroka and Yakovlev – who almost daily bought batches of currency for 5-10 million dollars!

Foreign exchange transactions for 8 months of 2010

And this is not counting the fact that the crisis of 2008-2009. AktaBank was used to actually steal depositors’ funds in the amount of more than 500 million hryvnia, of which 350 million were then compensated from the budget. Having finally gone bankrupt by 2015, AktaBank still has not yet paid off all its debts to gullible Ukrainians – and now the state (taxpayers) is paying for them.

In 2012, the Ukrselkhozprom company, which is part of the Alef corporation, bought Marfin Popular Bank in Estonia, renaming it Versobank (opening its representative offices in Kyiv and Dnepropetrovsk). And from the very beginning, she used it in schemes for transferring currency to offshore companies, which is why Versobank has more than once become the object of scandals and investigations. It has already been searched twice (2013 and 2015) by Estonian law enforcement officers, but it continues to operate. Thus, in 2015, Versobank transferred fees to Fuerteventura Inter LP, which acted as an intermediary in the sale of Ukrainian weapons to the UAE. But the deal did not take place, and the fee ($1.9 million) “floated away.” As NABU established, this was initially a scam.

But the loudest scandal involving Versobank could be the case of Vladimir Plahotniuc, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Moldova, the former vice-speaker of the Moldovan parliament, a very influential person in the country. He was involved in laundering through Moldovan banks 23 billion dollars coming from Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), moreover, from persons belonging to the so-called. “Magnitsky list”. According to Skelet.Infoin 2016, an assassination attempt was being prepared on him, in which the FSB was allegedly involved: it was reported that they wanted to eliminate Plahotniuc because he threatened to reveal information about money laundering to Western intelligence agencies. So, Versobank also participated in these schemes: in particular, it was confirmed that 205 million euros that belonged to people from Putin (*criminal)’s entourage were withdrawn through its accounts. But, although thorough checks were carried out on this fact in Estonia, and in Ukraine the National Police even opened a criminal case, Versobank continues to work and carry out its dirty schemes, and its owner Vadim Ermolaev feels so confident in Ukraine that he does not even seek to acquire a deputy mandate.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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